Straggler From Atlantis
By Manly Wade Wellman
Then he knew, or maybe he dreamed he knew, that he wasn’t sea-driven, wind-driven, any more. Those hours or eternities that had thrown him high like a stone from a sling, plunged him into strangling abysses of ocean, hurtled him in a drench and rattle of rain with the wreckage to which he clung, they were past. He was alive and out of the sea, lying peacefully face down on sand and pebbles. The waves only murmured, as though to comfort him.
He could feel the sun’s warm caress on his naked back, after the wind and storm and dark clouds like smothering robes. He had not died and gone wherever one goes when one dies. He was alive and ashore—somewhere. He might even be safe.
Rolling over, he opened his eyes to see where he had been flung by the tempest that couldn’t kill him. He sprawled on a white beach. Inland showed clumps of rich-leaved trees; in the sky overhead were scattered soft clouds, green and rose and pearl, like the feathers of softly tinted birds. Almost within reach of his hand lodged the splintered wooden gate that had served him in some measure as a raft, the great gate that had earlier stood in the garden wall of Theona, queen of Atlantis.
. . .
